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Ask Matt: Is Apple going to be 'dead money' for long?

Q: Is Apple going to be "dead money" for a long time? A5: The life of the 1999 beauty queen is nowhere near as glamorous as the life of the 2013 pageant winner. And the same goes for "darling" stocks that

A: The life of the 1999 beauty queen is nowhere near as glamorous as the life of the 2013 pageant winner. And the same goes for "darling" stocks that lose their favored status with investors.

Investors at an alarming frequency get enamored with specific stocks. Some tie into a current industry craze, such as the Internet, others get popular because they're so large, like Microsoft. The latest stock to get larger than life is Apple, partially fanned by smartphone craze and also by the company's surging market value. The company was, briefly, the most valuable in the world.

But after shares of a stock are no longer darlings, and not featured incessantly on business TV and in the headlines, the process of bringing expectations back to reality can take many years.

Consider the case of Amazon.com, a highly profitable company that in many ways has delivered on the promise of the Internet. It took roughly eight years for the stock to regain its initial stock peak in early 1999. And it wasn't an easy wait, with the stock losing nearly 75% of its value in the process. And it's been nearly 15 years since Microsoft hit its stock-price peak in 1999, and the stock still hasn't regained those levels.

Apple was the darling stock of 2012, and investors are paying the price now. The stock is down 39% from its 52-week high. But the recovery has been slow and if history is a guide, the stock could be dead money for much longer.